Teaching students to think and work like scientists

IAS Professor Becca Price published an article, “Using the Paleobiology Database to Teach Scientific Practices: an Approach Aligned to Relational Culture Theory,” in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology. The article documents her philosophy teaching BES 301: Science Methods and Practice, in which students learn how science works by conducting their own research.

In just ten weeks, students learn enough about the fossil record to ask research questions that have never been asked before—and to answer those questions, analyzing data from the Paleobiology Database with statistical analyses they learn in class. Students write scientific papers about their results, many of which have been published in UWB’s student research journal The CROW.

Price supports students’ hard work with care, as the article describes. “Deep learning,” she says, “happens when students and their instructor build a cooperative, positive learning environment that includes high goals and support through mistakes.”